Note 73 — THE PETTY PIRATES.
Reading edition
This brief account of Cervantes’ captivity is abridged from my friend Mr. H. E. Watts’s admirable Life, prefixed to his translation of Don Quixote. The main original authority on the matter is Haedo, who writes on the evidence of witnesses who knew Cervantes in Algiers, and who one and all spoke with enthusiasm and love of his courage and patience, his good humour and unselfish devotion (Watts, i. 76, 96).